The Hunt for Baby Bass
by Bea Ryan
Summary: "Fun" Revolution is requested frequently on Tumblr. Here's the quest for Bass' son with a more jolly tone to it than we typically see on the show. Charloe and Riles are existing secret relationships in this work. The rest of this work is plotted but not yet typed.
1. Chapter 1

They'd known it was just a matter of time until they were caught. Bass and Charlie had been hiding their liaisons not out of respect but convenience. This wasn't forever; it was stolen moments, sometimes stolen hours, of slamming tender bits together until they found a hard physical release. Rachel and Miles were going to be pissed and loud about it when they found out. The two figured they might as well earn the rage they knew they'd have to eventually face down.

When the hammer finally fell it was quiet but deadly, like a dog fart.

Bass closed the door to the cabin behind him and unzipped his jacket. He hadn't finished kicking the snow off his boots before Miles handed him a sheet of paper. "It's a map to your son. Take it and go. Don't come back."

Bass collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table and carefully smoothed the wrinkles from the sheet. "What are these little clouds?" he asked.

"Sheep," Rachel said. Her voice lilted and her eyes were unfocused. Charlie rolled her eyes and raised one eyebrow telling Bass everything he needed to know; Rachel had been into Cynthia's special blend again. "I drew sheep on the paper. Happy little sheep on a happy little farm where you should go. Go and be happy. Go."

"Is this really where he is? What's his name?" Bass asked.

"Hubert Glasscock," Miles answered.

"Are you shitting me?" Bass said. "I'll fucking kill his adoptive parents. Who names a kid that? Was he raised by Satanists? You can tell me. I promise I won't overreact."

"He goes by Hue," Miles said.

"Umm..." Charlie muttered from across the room.

"Shut up, Charlie," Miles snapped.

"Why didn't you tell me that was Bass' son?" she asked.

"Oh he's Bass now, is he?" Miles sneered.

"I like to be on a first name basis with the guys I'm fucking."

Bass cut off the spat before it could go any further. The look he threw Charlie made her glad he'd lost the ability to impulsively order executions. "You knew?"

"When I went on walkabout Miles asked me to stop by a certain sheep farm and ask if the giant cock was doing OK. I figured if Miles was putting it that way to me it must be some sort of giant rooster. You guys did have your own little twisted science lab in Philly, so why wouldn't I think you'd genetically engineered a dick joke? I laughed when the farm mistress explained the misunderstanding, but I guess Mrs. Glasscock is sick of the jokes. She said Hue was off on a bender and had moved into town. I checked the town, especially the bars, but I never found him."

"And then what?" Bass demanded. "You gave up the search? You went on this special mission for Miles and you just gave up?"

"I went traveling for me. I went to a farm searched bars for him. Enough people said that Hue Glasscock was fine, awesome, dandy, the best I'd ever hope to have, and on and on that I figured he really was fine. I dropped his trail when I picked up yours."

Bass' voice was low and thick and his eyes bored into Charlie. "I want everything you have and I want it now."

Rachel grabbed her screwdriver and lunged for Bass. "You leave my daughter alone you dirty, old pervert!" Miles grabbed her around the waist and Charlie wrenched the screwdriver from her hand.

Bass appeared unaffected by this latest attack on his life. To Charlie he said, "Let's talk while I pack."

Twenty minutes later Bass was gone. He'd taken a horse loaded down with two saddle bags of weapons, food, and cold weather gear and left. She'd followed him to the barn, hoping for a farewell roll in the hay, but he hadn't even allowed time for a goodbye fuck. He hadn't seen his son in over two decades, had only been looking for him for a year, and the man wouldn't slow down long enough for a bit of "parting is such sweet sorrow." She hoped he got a saddle blister on his balls. Not only was she horny with no good way to scratch her itch, the bastard had left her to face Miles and Rachel on her own.

Rachel was back in a jolly mood by the time Charlie returned. Charlie glanced at her mother as she sprawled on the couch with her head in Miles' lap laughing. "Huge cock? That's Bass' son? Yours maybe but his is only on the upper end of average and it has this weird bend in it."

Charlie knew the bend. It was a good bend. Miles glared at the woman who seemed to be trying to get a rise out of his pants by rubbing the back of her head against his zipper. Whether his frustration was with her knowledge of Bass' cock or that her current technique had all the finesse of an enthusiastic Labrador was anyone's guess. Charlie couldn't stand to watch the hypocrites pretend they weren't fucking any longer and headed up to her room.

When she was halfway up the stairs she heard another burst of laughter from Rachel. "Did you even tell him that Hue might not be his kid? Hue will, if Bass ever finds him. Poor kid. Is Bass technically a spree killer or a serial killer?"

Charlie froze. More than once she'd heard the jokes about Bass acting in the moment and repenting at his leisure. He'd mentioned it himself as he'd lingered before undoing her last button the first time they'd been together. He wouldn't really kill the man who might be his son if he was told it wasn't a certainty, would he? In Philadelphia there had been a friend named Jeremy he'd had executed. Bass had realized his mistake ten minutes after he'd ordered the execution. Unfortunately the shots had already been fired.

She ran to her room and grabbed extra socks, gloves, and all the cold weather gear she had. They'd been looting as they moved through the mountains, but gear in her size had been hard to come by. She could cuff up the extra length on her snowpants when she had to walk, but then the moisture tended to wick against her skin. As long as she was riding she'd just bunch it up. The extra bulk would be uncomfortable but warm and it let her conceal her throwing knives more easily. She stashed a small arsenal of weapons on her body, careful not to stab herself and that she could get to everything without taking the time to unzip, and scrawled a quick note to freak out to the hypocritical faux-adults she called family, "I know what you did. I'll come back when I'm ready. Love, Charlie," before sneaking out the backdoor.


	2. Chapter 2

Bass had left only 20 minutes ahead of her, but he was moving quickly. Two hours into her journey she still hadn't been able to make up enough time to catch sight of him. She'd given him an overview of the region and details of the farm and bars. Too late she realized they had a variety of routes they could each take for the next several hundred miles and she'd given him enough places to go that she'd have a tough time finding him if she lost him now. So far the snow had made tracking him from horseback relatively simple, but if she had to dismount and look for trampled grass and broken sticks she'd fall further back.

She rounded a corner and the wind knocked the breath out of her. The ground was bald here, swept clear of snow and the wind too harsh to let anything survive in the rocky soil. The field had no trails across it and the snow had been swept all but clear. The space was over 400 feet wide and six different thin spots in the brush that marked the end of the clearing suggested paths he might have taken. With no markings on the ground she was left with nothing but logic and luck.

One path headed due East, the direction he needed to travel to get to his son. Someone had drug an old "Do Not Enter" sign to the trailhead and nailed it to the largest tree, but she knew Bass wouldn't let that slow him down. Warclans, bandits, and highwaymen were all just annoyances for his sword. He didn't mind killing them nearly as much as he minded cleaning their blood off his weapon. Wiping it on the grass wasn't through and left him sheathing a dirty blade. Wiping it on his pants made them sticky and risked cutting the fabric. Bass was a diva when given the opportunity to care about creature comforts.

Charlie tried to relax as she fought her way through the wind across the field. She'd stumbled across him in accidentally before. The man was recognizable and this time she knew where he was going. She'd find him again; she just wanted it to be sooner rather than later. Truth be told she only needed to find him for a few hours and then she wouldn't mind letting him get a bit ahead and catching up to him again. Neither of them was inclined to hand holding and snuggling. Cat and mouse suited them.

She crossed the treeline and had time to draw a deep breath to steady her nerves before the shadow the flew out of the woods and hit her in the stomach, doubling her over and knocking the air back out of her.

She heard the voice above her as she stared at the ground and gasped for breath. "Oh, no! Charlie! I'm so sorry."

"You are not forgiven," she thought.


	3. Chapter 3

Rachel finally passed out and Miles rolled her gently off of him. He loved her, but her substance habit had become annoying. She was neither as funny nor in control of herself as she thought she was when she was strung out. Over the last few weeks she'd moved from taking a little something to settle her nerves, which had seemed logical under the circumstances, to a lot of everything until the pain was numbed. He felt for her, he'd been there himself, but he'd also suddenly found a lot more sympathy for every woman who'd ever dated him.

Maybe one day he would give up the whiskey, but not today. Three fingers of courage and then he'd go upstairs and explain to Charlie why he was right to send her ex-dictator boy toy away. Knowing she was wrinkling the sheets with Bass almost made him miss Jason. Ten minutes later Miles began climbing the stairs and vowed to use a wider glass to measure his whiskey next time.

He entered to room and stared. She'd made a hell of a mess for a girl who didn't own much. The dresser looked like it had been storing video games on Black Friday, portions were empty and the rest, summer clothes mostly, looked hastily shoved aside. The contents of the closet had been vomited all over the floor, creating a laundry gauntlet for Miles to navigate on the way to the perfectly made bed. The folded sheet of pink paper propped in the center of the white pillowcase threatened him in a way no idiot with a weapon ever had.

It took less time to read the note than it did to trip twice on the way back out of the room. The stupid kid intended to cross the Badlands alone in search of Bass. Last time she'd gone walking she'd gone north from Texas through Arkansas and into Missouri. He'd set that route for her for a reason. It was safer. This time she was starting from Colorado and headed straight across Nebraska to Missiouri. Nebraska! Dustbowl, cannibal tribes, people who still thought high school football could change their lives no matter that there were no more high schools.

He knew she'd made it through the Plains Nation once before when she'd caught Bass trail and tailed him to New Vegas, but they'd been on the Kansas route. It was well-marked and well-traveled by wagon trains hoping to find better in California than what they'd left behind. This time she'd be crossing a land that was only good for leaving even back when the power had been on. The absence of light, medicine, and regular warm showers hadn't made the place more appealing.

"Rachel, grab a bag," he called out when he was halfway down the stairs.

She was deep in the relaxing arms of Cynthia's special blend and only snored in reply.

"I just want one completely sane person in my life," Miles muttered to himself as he loaded boxes of ammo into his backpack. "Is that really too much to ask?"


	4. Chapter 4

Twelve miles away, Aaron rubbed his head as he came to. He hated going on vision quests with the nanites, but he did it daily anyway. He'd moved to the cabin so he wouldn't accidentally trigger another human barbecue party, but he was lonely. "Going visiting" let him pretend he wasn't isolated while putting everyone in just as much danger as if he'd never left. It was a lose-lose situation, the worst of both worlds, and he felt powerless to turn it around. Ironic since he had the only house with working electricity for miles around. He'd suggested turning it back on for everyone, but the nanites said that would be too draining for them.

"Would you like me to find her?" The face was Danny's but the consciousness was nanite. He liked it when they were Danny. Danny smiled and was brave. He had no regrets about Danny. Well, he hadn't until recently. The nanites had been presenting themselves as Cynthia and he'd allowed himself to forget for a while that it wasn't real. He'd shown the woman before him how much he loved and missed her. The nanites had later tried to explain that he had been happy and relaxed and they thought that meant Danny. Now they'd agreed not to change forms without asking him first.

"Yes. Find Charlie and we'll stop her."

An hour later, nanite Danny leaped like Superman, punched Charlie in the stomach, and knocked her off of her horse as she entered the woods.

"Oh, no! Charlie! I'm so sorry," Aaron said.

"You wanted her stopped," Danny said. "She has stopped."


	5. Chapter 5

Loading a loaded Rachel onto a horse was a comedy of errors. Miles would have laughed if it had happened to Laurel and Hardy. As it was, it was happening to him and with each moment Charlie slipped further away. Rachel was adorable in her own tweaked way. She so rarely relaxed that her insistence on riding her horse backwards, wearing a pink coat, and rubbing Miles' belly for luck were kind of cute. They were also quickly resolved. Her other mental vacations made him adjust his plans.

She got lost on her first trip to the outhouse and it took him half an hour to find her. She deep in discussion with the rabbits in the barn. She claimed she'd always wondered if they pooped in the magician's hat as revenge for being yanked about by the ears and now seemed like the moment to find out. Miles escorted her to the outhouse. "Go before you go" was always good advice for travelers, particularly ones who seemed to have limited control of their faculties. He could easily picture her drug addled brain inspiring her to wipe with briars before wandering off a cliff while trying to pee in the woods. Whether stone sober or tripping balls, life with Rachel was never boring.

Miles shook the snow from his hair and knocked on the outhouse door. "Rachel, did you fall asleep? What's taking so long?"

A quiet hiss came back in reply.

Miles shoved hard on the outhouse door. The wood creaked and the door rattled in the frame, but the latch held. He began kicking the weathered wood, not caring if it was the latch, the door or the entire building that gave way first.

Rachel cried out pain and then opened the door. "It would have been fine," she said. "I speak Parseltongue. Unfortunately you startled him and he bit me."

"Danny?" Charlie gasped. She jumped up from the ground and wrapped him in a hug. He was exactly as she remembered him, his shaggy blond hair smelling of the candles Maggie burned in the living room while they played cards before bed. As it always seemed to be, his frame was broader than she expected it to be as she tried to envelop her baby brother in her arms. He was somehow always just finishing a growth spurt. She wondered if he'd ever stop growing before she remembered that he already had. Danny was gone. His blood had seeped through his shirt and hers the day he'd died. She felt the sticky warmth against her abdomen now.

"Not Danny," Aaron said as she backed away in horror. "Nanites." He folded her in a hug before glaring at Danny and ordering him to clean up the blood.

Charlie stared at her shirt wide eyed as the blood dispersed. It seemed to float away from her, the droplets spreading apart until they were too small to be seen, evaporating like a bloody mist and leaving a searing ache in her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply, struggling to accept that the pain was only emotional.

"Do they have to be Danny?" she asked.

"No," said Aaron. "They don't." To the nanites he said, "Be someone else." His mind ran through a list of people they shouldn't be and in their blisteringly logical way they took that as their presentation cue. Like a demented horror movie they morphed from Danny to Ben to Maggie to Nora to Cynthia. Each scene ended with the beloved person lying dead and bleeding on the ground before he or she transformed into the next person, rose from the ground to hug Charlie, collapsed to the ground and died.

Charlie stared in horror, her body rigidly accepting the death cuddles before she finally managed to whisper, "Stop."

The nanites stopped. Cynthia stood before her with a bloody hole in her shirt and a wry smile. "This is the image you choose? Very well. We will maintain this presentation for the time being."

"Great," thought Aaron.

Cynthia turned to him. "We are glad we have pleased you."


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Miles had sucked the venom out of Rachel's leg (gross), drug her back to the outhouse and placed her on the seat to handle her business (also gross), and helped her wash up and change clothes after an unfortunate mismatch between the amount of coordination she needed and the amount she had (grossest of all), he had to admit that the odds were against them catching up to Charlie. She was too far ahead and on horseback. Miles could either wait until morning to get Rachel on a horse or he could load her in a wagon and get started right away. The problem was he'd need to cut south and then east on the big road if he took the wagon. Charlie would be on the smaller but more direct route.

"Rachel," he yelled. "Will you be OK if I leave you here and ride after Charlie? I'll be back in a month or so." Even as he said it, he knew he wouldn't leave her. They'd spent enough time apart for one lifetime. Come hell or high water they'd face it together from here on out. His odds of living through the day somehow seemed to drop when Rachel was around, but his odds of smiling balanced out the danger. She was the wrong woman and always had been. The day he'd met her he'd known she was the one he shouldn't have, too smart, too classy, longing for a family, and involved with his brother. Everything about her was wrong for him. Every touch was a sin. Every slide of her hands over his body, every touch of her lips. All of it was wrong and always had been. Especially that thing she liked to do with Mardi Gras beads. That was so very, very wrong.

He listened to the lack of sounds in the nearly empty house. Rachel needed to hurry up and sober up so they could grab the chance to be loudly wrong together before they took off to find Charlie. He knew where she was headed and the town near the farm wasn't that big. It wouldn't matter if they left now or in the morning, would it?

Charlie fought down the tears. The morphing display of human loss had been grotesque. She'd known on some level that she'd had a bad year, but she never let herself think about it all at once.

"I have to leave," she said as she rubbed at her eyes. "I have to catch up to Bass."

"No," Aaron said, gently touching her arm. "You're in no condition to travel."

"If I lose him now I'll never find him again. I can't lose anyone else."

Aaron turned to the nanites. "Find Monroe and bring him back here."

Nanite Cynthia smiled slowly, her head craning to view Charlie as she sprawled on the ground. "We will bring him here." Then the form of Cynthia dispersed into specks of flickering light and disappeared through the trees like a swarm of fireflies.

"Will he be OK?" she asked.

"He won't get away, that's for sure." Charlie grabbed his arm. Aaron promised, "Anything they do to him, they can undo."

Aaron led Charlie and her horse down a small trail through the trees and past two more warning signs before they entered a clearing containing what might have once bee someones vacation cabin. Now it looked like a drafty pile of timbers ready to pitch over in a strong wind.

"You live here?" Charlie asked as she surveyed the leaning building.

"Yeah," Aaron answered. "With the nanites. It's kind of like the TARDIS."

The words "What's a TARDIS?" died on Charlie's lips as she crossed the threshold. She'd seen Aaron's house back in Wisconsin, a scruffy testament to scavenged bits nerdom and science fiction, but she suspected this was a scaled down version of what his life had been like before the blackout. A large television and assorted peripheral equipment dominated one wall. Another wall was taken up by a large fireplace. The third wall seemed to be windows, but the view they showed was the sunset over the ocean rather than what it should be, snow falling on high mountain pines. The fourth wall opened directly to a large kitchen. She wandered that way, following a low humming sound that she couldn't place. Distant helicopters?

Aaron brushed past her and yanked open a polished chrome door. A light glowed from within and she remembered playing with the door in her own kitchen as a child. She'd sprayed water down on Danny and made a puddle on the floor while he laughed. "The fridge is fully stocked and boy can the nanites cook. Anything you want, just name it."

"The nanites are gone," she said. "We saw them leave."

"Some nanites are gone. There are quadrillions of them. They are everywhere all the time. It takes a lot of them to assemble into a person, but I've had them form into enough people to fill this room and there were still enough of them around to work magic and machinery at the molecular level."

"You filled the room with people?" Charlie asked.

"Just a little party. I was lonely. They were kind of sycophantic. It reminded me of life before the blackout. I'd forgotten that people used to bother to lie to me."

A loud knock on the front door made Charlie draw her knife and spin towards the potential source of danger.

"Who is it?" Aaron called.

"I am uncertain who I should be," came back a voice strangely devoid of gender, accent, or emotional inflection. "You do not want me to by Cynthia, but you do want the guest to be comfortable. Who should I be?"

Aaron's mind ran through a list of people he and Charlie both knew. Someone dead was unacceptable, someone living was disconcerting, and the people they knew from the village in Wisconsin that they'd probably never see again were simply depressing.

"OK, cool. This will work," said the voice. This time it was lower and distinctly male. Jason Neville walked through the door. "General Monroe is on his way here. Should be about half an hour."


End file.
